


Go down in flames (I'm taking you)

by zanzibar



Series: (Paid for with) Pride and Fate [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2014 Winter Olympics, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 14:18:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3853786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanzibar/pseuds/zanzibar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Less than a minute after John goes down on the ice in Sochi, Sam throws up in an alley in Mexico."</p><p>In which Sam laments distance and injuries and time-zones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go down in flames (I'm taking you)

**Author's Note:**

> This is apparently a series now.
> 
> Story and series titles janked from 30 Seconds to Mars ~ Closer to the Edge. Because why stop now that there's a theme.

Less than a minute after John goes down on the ice in Sochi, Sam throws up in an alley in Mexico. 

These 2 events will be linked in Sam's mind for eternity. The image of John on his knees behind the net will never not be accompanied by the rise of bile in the back of his throat. 

He's in the alley for probably 5 minutes before Jordan brings him a bottle of water, because Jordan Eberle is everyone's Catholic great aunt. Bringing to the table the ability to match anyone in the bar tequila shot for tequila shot and then making sure to get everyone into a cab, home to bed, with preferred Gatorade flavors on nightstands throughout the villa they're renting in Cabo. 

Jordan rests a comforting hand on Sam's hunched back and waits while Sam sips the water and tries to clear his throat. 

"He skated off on his own," Jordan crosses his arms when Sam leans back against the cool cinderblock wall. 

“His shoulder?” Sam coughs twice as he says it, not sure what he’d rather the answer be.

“I think so,” Jordan shrugs apologetically, like there’s some protocol for being the guy who delivers this kind of news, “Taylor thinks maybe his knee, but it looked to me like he went into the boards weird and maybe just jammed something a little.”

“He’s not back though,” Sam looks up from the greasy pavement of the alley.

“Not back,” Jordan confirms, “they promised to come get us if he was back on the bench while we were still out here.”

Sam rinses out his mouth with the last of the water, crushes the flimsy plastic in his hand and tosses the bottle in the dumpster. Leading the way back into the bar, Jordan’s hand a solid presence on his shoulder as they make their way through the crowd.

Sam has 2 texts when he gets back to the table. One each from his youngest sister and John’s youngest sister.

Renee’s text is a mess of emoticons, maple leaves and key-smashing that he recognizes as sisterly sympathy.

Laura’s is 2 sentences from halfway around the globe. With appropriate capitalization and punctuation. You’ll know as soon as I do. Stay off twitter.

Midway through the third, when there’s as much uncertainty about the outcome of the game as there is about why John’s not back on the bench, Laura texts again.

Knee.

Sam’s not ashamed to say he doesn’t even bother with water this time and just takes his beer and his phone into the alley with him. The enormous taco platter they shared during the second intermission feels like a terrible burning decision now.

Laura’s last text is an hour later. Long enough that Sam’s stomach is still roiling but they’ve had a Taylor-mandated victory shot of tequila and Sam’s managed to wash away most of the bile in his throat with Corona and they’ve cabbed it back to the house they’re renting.

Through the open sliding glass doors Sam can hear Taylor, sprawled in a deck chair, waxing poetic about his eternal love of playing for, cheering for, and being born in the land of the Maple Leaf. Jordan’s listening attentively, while also being mostly asleep in the chair next to him and the rest of the guys are either lounging in the pool or taking afternoon naps to combat the fact that they started drinking at about 8 this morning.

Sam’s alone in the kitchen, slicing some of the chicken that they grilled last night so he can make nachos with hands that are not shaking at this moment. His phone is out of arm's reach and there’s an unopened beer, a bottle of water and an open Gatorade on the counter.

The house has a big open kitchen with bright yellow walls and turquoise cabinets and hand-painted tiles on the counters. The combination creates so much aggressively colored Mexican joy that when Sam’s phone bounces across the counter for one minute he can almost believe that given the surroundings there’s no way it can be bearing bad news.

This is not the case.

Done for the tourn. MRI day after tomorrow. Lots of swelling.

* * *

“Sammy!” John’s face lights up when he registers Sam’s face on the computer screen and he reaches forward and bumps his fingers against the screen like he believes his current cocktail of painkillers have given him the ability to reach through time and space.

“Hi JT,” Sam grins, taking in the Ace bandage and ice wrapped knee that’s propped on a couple of pillows, the stack of pillows stacked behind John and his dark eyes, almost the eyes Sam knows and loves, but for the half-vacant, pain-killer induced fog.

It’s late morning in Sochi, which means it’s either ridiculously late or ridiculously early in Cabo, Sam isn’t really keeping track. The sliding doors that lead out onto the lanai are open, because Sam’s lazy and on vacation and now that he’s in bed he doesn’t want to get up and shut them. But it’s late enough that he’s pulled on a hoodie because the breeze blowing in from the water isn’t entirely balmy and it’s been dark for a while the house finally quieting around him despite the kids, who Taylor promised were going to “party like rock-stars Gags,” finally collapsed in bed.

“Russia broke me,” John sobers for a minute, “but I love you,” 

“Did they give you some good drugs Johnny?” Sam teases, “do you feel like you’re floating?”

“Shut the fuck up jerk, I’m trying to tell you important things. About loving you. And being in love with you. And Russia,” he trails off, distracted by something just off screen.

“He’s pretty high right now,” John’s mom leans into the frame just for a second, “he’s probably not going to start talking about the hamsters on the walls or anything, but the mix of painkillers and anti-inflammatories that he’s on makes him really honest.” 

Sam recognizes the set of her face as “hockey mom - here to handle things,” which Sam’s mom describes as “a combination of unfettered worried about your kid and the realization that that same kid also voluntarily hurls himself across a sheet of ice at 30 miles an hour after a tiny piece of rubber.”

“I’m going to meet your sisters downstairs,” John’s mom brushes his hair off his forehead, presses a kiss against the side of his head. “Try to sleep a little, please.” She turns her attention to Sam before she disappears, “love you Sam, be safe please.”

“Bye Mrs. T,” Sam raises a hand to wave.

“So how do you feel bud,” Sam can’t help asking, there’s literally nothing he can do or say to change the current situation, but the words still spill out almost unwillingly.

“It’s bad,” John admits looking off to the side like he’s checking to make sure the door clicking shut means his mom has really left the room. “They aren’t saying how bad until the swelling goes down and we have the MRI, but it’s going to be the season.”

“You don’t know that,” Sam protests, “you can’t know that,” he argues half-heartedly. Because the reality is John probably does know. He’s been a professional athlete since he was 14 and of all people he can probably recognize the difference between an injury that can be rehabbed and an injury that means months of physical therapy.

“I think McKenzie even tweeted it,” John shrugs, “or maybe one of the Islander guys. They haven’t really told me, because there’s no official prognosis. But I got the good drugs and nobody’s said anything about taking them away from me.”

“Laur made me promise to stay off twitter,” Sam admits. “It’s probably better for everyone if I don’t know what they’re saying.”

“You should never read what they write about you on the internet Sammy,” John yawns around the word, “everybody’s an insider but no one knows what they’re talking about.”

Sam snorts and watches as John’s head slumps back against the pillows. “You need to sleep JT, they give you the good drugs so you can sleep and your body can heal faster.”

“I hate crutches,” John murmurs, lifting his head up off the pillows as though he’s just realized this, “d’you think I can have a scooter instead?”

“I don’t think they give hockey players scooters,” Sam smiles fondly, “you know someone would take it out on the ice and have some horrific accident and concuss themselves and ruin it for everyone.”

“It’s weird here,” John against the sheets, “pretty much everyone knows I’m done but they’re still treating me like I’m part of the team. But I can’t go anywhere and can’t do any of the fun stuff like go to practice or anything. So I’m basically just stuck in a hotel room in Russia with my mom and sisters hovering and my dad trying to act like this is a totally normal and expected situation and everything is going to be OK.”

“It is going to be OK,” Sam’s fingers itch with the desire to brush John’s hair back from his forehead, to rub his back until he falls asleep. It’s impossible to be an actual caretaker through a computer screen and he hates it.

“Tell me things about Cabo until I fall asleep,” John slides down on the bed until he’s curled on his side. “The pain pills make me have crazy dreams about skating on purple ice and Kyle turning into a dinosaur.”

“We did surfing lessons today,” Sam rests the laptop on his chest so he can gesture while he talks. “They start by teaching you how to get up on your board on the beach. Where it’s basically a hard flat surface. But I fell twice before they let us get near the water. So you can imagine how the rest went.”

John laughs quietly into the pillow.

“Taylor was good at it. Because Taylor’s an athletic freak of nature who’s never been bad at anything as long as he lives. But Jordan and I stopped because we would probably get sent to the ECHL if we get concussed by a surfboard during the Olympic break.”

“I miss you,” Sam sobers for a minute, “it shouldn’t be any different than me in Edmonton and you on the Island. But it feels different. Farther away.”

“Love you Sam,” John buries the yawn in his pillow.

“I love you JT. You need to sleep. Close your eyes, I’ll be here till you fall asleep.”

Sam watches until John’s breathing evens, until his eyelids stop fluttering and his body is finally still. He hits the end button, dumps the laptop off the side of the bed and rolls over to scream his frustration into a pillow.

* * *

"Want me to fly there," Sam's absolutely serious about it. It will be, hands-down, the most expensive plane ticket he's ever bought, it's like 3 different airlines, a red-eye and 4 connecting flights, he's not entirely sure if his passport will even work for a long haul flight from Mexico to Russia, his entire wardrobe right now is tank tops, flip flops and board shorts and the jet lag will probably kill him. But his credit card information is already filled out on the website and if John says yes not a single one of those things matters. 

"Yes," John's alone in his room in the athlete’s village and his voice is nakedly honest. “I got an MRI and I can’t play this season and they took away all the good drugs. Now I get Tylenol 3, probably knee surgery, six-months of physical therapy and something that makes me loopy and sluggish and is supposedly going to help me sleep at night.”

“Garth’s going to lose his shit,” John smiles wryly. Like season ending injuries and the impending implosion of the General Manager of the professional sports team you play for is just another hurdle in the life and times of John Tavares.

“I could be there like day after tomorrow-ish,” Sam shrugs, time zones are challenging and he hasn’t flown internationally in probably 8 years without the aid of a professional hockey team or Hockey Canada-type travel expert booking (and buying) his tickets and shepherding him through all sorts of customs/plane-changing-type experiences.

“I want you to come,” John adjusts the pillow under his knee and sits up straighter, “but I’m pretty much on bed rest and confined to this incredibly depressing room.”

“A couple of the guys tried sneaking their girlfriends in and I think maybe Kane stopped by to see Jon, but unless you’re a Canadian athlete or a gold medal winner it’s basically impossible to get someone in,”

“You’ll have a gold medal,” Sam says it confidently, like he doesn’t know exactly what John’s opinion is of the value of a medal which he’ll be awarded for a game he didn’t participate in.

John doesn’t even dignify that with an answer. He just tilts his head to the side and rests it on a pillow so he can still watch Sam without actually holding his head up.

“You’re staying right?” Sam knows the answer, but he has to be sure, because the Olympics only happen every 4 years and this is the chance of a lifetime for John and he should stay. But, a ticket to Toronto or New York isn’t a ticket to Sochi, and a scant few days with John is better than no days at all.

“‘m staying,” John mumbles into the pillow he’s sagging against, “everybody I love but you is here, which sucks, but Babs gave me a big inspirational speech about staying for the experience and still representing my country and using this as a foundation for my future.”

“You should stay,” Sam tries to make his voice strong, motivational, the way he imagines Mike Babcock talks to his team, “you earned this and you deserve to be there till the end.”

“I wish you were here,” John’s falling asleep now, his words slurred and fading with a combination of insufficient painkillers and exhaustion, “this wouldn’t suck as much if you were here.”

* * *

If Drew Doughty is surprised to see Sam's face filling the iPad screen he has a pretty good poker face. But Sam's a little distracted trying to perform complex medical diagnoses via FaceTime while sitting by the pool. 

“Hey Gags,” Drew drops his head part way into the screen. Hat backward and hair spiking at million angles under it.

“Hi Doughts,” Sam smiles back as he disappears from the frame.

“You look better,” Sam’s pretty sure he isn’t imaging that John doesn’t look as pale as he did the other day. “How do you feel?” Sam crosses his feet and barely resists the urge to look suspiciously over the tops of his sunglasses at his phone.

“I got upgraded from the super crappy painkillers back to something that actually makes me feel no pain,” John shrugs. “I’ve been taking a lot of naps.”

“So basically you and Doughts are champions of the Hockey Canada sleeping team,” Sam teases.

“And you’re facetiming me while you’re out tanning by the pool Sammy,” John flips him off. “Can you see the water from your deck?”

“Yes,” Sam angles his phone toward the water.

“There could be less Taylor Hall in that picture of paradise,” John intones.

Taylor flails in his deck chair and barely manages not to knock over his beer. “You’re a jerk JT,” he calls, “I don’t know why Sam likes you so much.”

Sam suppresses a grin and turns the phone back toward him. “Anything else you want to see?”

“Your dick?” John grins, impish, his voice loud enough that clearly he’s hoping the rest of the guys hear.

“Oh, I was going to go find some food. But I’m hanging out if there’s going to be dicks,” Drew ducks back into the picture arms full of a bottle of red Gatorade, an enormous bottle of water and 3 cans of beer. He’s grinning like the cat who swallowed the canary and he dumps everything next to John, hands the water to him and cracks open a beer.

John glares at the water like the bottle has personally wronged him and tries to lunge for the 2 Molson’s resting on the opposite side of John.

“What are you even doing,” Sam squawks while Drew holds John off with a hand in his chest, “beer and narcotics don’t mix.”

“Beer and painkillers isn’t good for you JT,” Ebs comments as he wanders by with 2 beers and a half-empty bag of chips. “Taylor did it once and slept in his closet.”

“It seemed like a good decision at the time,” Taylor says indignantly stealing one of Jordan’s beers to add to other bottles next to his chair, “it was safe.”

“Our house is pretty safe Tay,” Jordan leans over to press a kiss against Taylor’s forehead and then flips his hat down more squarely on his head. “Don’t get sunburned, hockey helmets and sunburn are a bad combination.”

“Kid love is not as entertaining as dicks, dudes,” Drew levers himself up off the bed, “I’m going to find someone to play ping-pong with.” He grabs the beers John was creeping closer to again and waves before he disappears off-screen.

The door closes behind him and John cracks a grin and winks suggestively.

Sam doesn’t need to be asked twice.

“I’m going upstairs,” Sam calls to basically no one, ignoring the hoots as he disappears through the sliding doors and into the cool, mid-afternoon darkness of the house.

“We’re so subtle right now,” John grins before leaning over the side of his bed for one of his crutches. “I’m going to lock the door.”

“Don’t fall please,” Sam says closing his own door, “I really want to see your dick,” he mutters more quietly.

“I heard that,” John appears again, flushed from his quick hop to the door and from Sam’s declaration. “The mic on your phone picks up more than you think.”

John sits on the edge of the bed and unsnaps the knee brace he’s wearing. Without standing up he lifts up his ass and slides his loose pants off as well. He settles back on the bed and raises an eyebrow to Sam.

“You’re the only person I know who gets impatient during phone sex,” Sam grumbles as he stands up to strip off his board shorts. “I have one article of clothing on, there’s no need to get cranky.”

“I like it better when I get to take your clothes off,” John smiles his hands flexing unconsciously, “there’s no need to be impatient when I’m the one who gets to touch you.”

“Jesus,” Sam mutters as he crawls back into bed.

“Since I’m not there I’m glad to see you haven’t been tanning naked,” John grins appreciatively when Sam stretches to grab the bottle of lotion from the bedside table.

“Hallsy tried to convince us to the other day,” Sam admitted flopping back down on the bed lotion in hand, “but I think it was mostly a half-hearted attempt to convince Jordan to have sex in the hot tub.”

“He’s basically the least subtle ever,” John’s voice is steady but Sam gets distracted watching his long fingers slide aimlessly across his bare thighs and down casually to cup his balls

“True,” Sam snorts and squirts some lotion on his belly. “Thank god he has Jordan otherwise Lord knows the trouble they’d get up to.”

“I feel like they get into a fair amount of trouble even when Jordan is supposedly the responsible one,” John replies, “or are we conveniently forgetting Jordan blowing Taylor in your kitchen when they were just supposed to be getting more beer.”

“Stop,” Sam groans, “my brain can’t handle naked you on my phone screen crossed with Taylor’s bare ass pressed against my kitchen drawers and Jordan’s knees on my floor.”

“For the record,” John wraps his hand around his dick and meets Sam’s eyes through the screen, “I’d totally have sex with you in the hot tub.”

“And I’d blow you in your kitchen or mine in a heartbeat. But right now I just want to touch you,” Sam moves his slick hand slowly on his own dick, watching as John does the same, “I always want that.”

The mic on John’s iPad picks up the way his breath catches and Sam has to squeeze his dick tight just for a second so this isn’t all over as quickly as it started. John quirks an eyebrow and Sam blushes just for a minute.

“I like to hear you,” Sam admits, shrugging his shoulders while trying to recapture the slow steady rhythm he’d built up.

“I feel like I’m back in Oshawa,” John mutters, speeding his hand just a little. “But if I was there we’d just be on the phone and I wouldn’t be able to see you.”

“And I wouldn’t be able to see how good you look like that,” Sam traces the flush as it winds down John’s chest, scooping the last of the lotion off his belly and spreading it on his dick. “And we weren’t this good at this back then.”

“We had a lot of practice though,” John chuckles under his breath as he says it. “Working hard to get better.”

It’s so reminiscent of something John would say about hockey, after hours on Sam’s backyard rink, their hands practically ringing from hundreds of slapshots.

“You’re such a perfectionist,” Sam grins adding a little twist of his hand that takes his breath away.

“I wish you were here,” John almost whispers it after 2 too many beats of silence, “not just for this, but everything.” Sam’s breath hitches at that, his chest feels heavy with how much he wants that too, to actually be at John’s side for things like this, in victory and in defeat, tragedy and triumph.

They’re quiet after that, matching their rhythm together easily, eyes skipping across naked bodies, familiar and yet so far away. John’s breath quickens and Sam can’t help the little moans that keep spilling out of his mouth. Some of the lotion slides down and just for a minute Sam reaches down to catch it, inadvertently running a finger around the sensitive puckered skin. 

It’s a jolt of too much and not enough and before he knows it Sam’s digging a foot into the mattress and the moan dragged from his throat as he arches into his hand one last time.

John is quieter when he comes, Sam’s whispered name on his lips and his eyes so dark they’re practically black.

They just lay there and grin at each other until the mess on John’s stomach starts to cool and he starts looking around for something to clean up with. Sam reaches for the box of kleenex on the table and gets distracted by the achy pull of muscles he hasn’t used since he got on the airplane in Edmonton. He pulls his other arm up and yawns into the strech.

When he looks back at his phone screen John’s sitting up to pull a towel from the foot of his bed and Sam just came and he certainly isn’t 16 anymore but he’d have to be dead not to have a healthy appreciation for the flex of John’s abs as he pulls himself up.

“Love you,” John tosses the towel over the side of the bed and reaches over to pull on his boxers.

“Love you,” Sam dabs at his stomach with a kleenex and yawns again, “put your brace back on before you fall asleep.”

“You’re going to fall asleep naked aren’t you,” Sam’s eyes are already drifting closed but he nods and tunes in enough to hear the knee brace going back on.

“Wish you were here,” Sam’s jaw cracks, “sleeping naked is better with you.”

* * *  
It’s not hard to change his flight destination from Edmonton to Newark. The flight leaves 20 minutes later than his originally scheduled flight and is only 25 minutes longer. It’s a strange dichotomy to think that there’s almost 4,000 kilometers between Sam’s house in Edmonton and John’s house on Long Island, but it’s only a half hour difference in the air.

The Hockey Canada charter gets in vaguely between 8 and 11, so Sam grabs his bags and a cab. He’s wearing his only winter appropriate clothes, feet shoved into socks and shoes for the first time in almost a week and he’s thankful for the rush of heat that comes as he climbs in the backseat and automatically gives the driver John’s address.

John’s house smells like it’s been empty for 2 weeks, the somewhat stale chemical smell of the cleaning crew combined with the furnace turned down and no actual bodies coming and going. Sam opens a couple of windows downstairs, orders not-nutritional plan approved Thai food from his favorite place and goes upstairs to dump his bag.

He lingers between changing his clothes now or waiting and showering with John when he gets home. In the end he compromises and trades his jeans for a pair of John’s worn sweats and kicks his socks into the otherwise empty hamper. As at home in John’s house as he is in his own Sam strips the bed efficiently and pulls John’s favorite sheets from the linen closet.

He throws the sheets in the dryer to warm them up and considers pulling his dirty clothes out in preparation for doing actually laundry. In the end that plan is interrupted by the doorbell and his decision that he can just do all of he and John’s laundry at once and be way more efficient about the whole thing. He makes it all the way down the stairs to answer the door before he realizes that his wallet is upstairs in his pants pocket and has to run all the way back up to pay for his food.

He dumps the food on the counter and runs around to close the windows. The house doesn’t smell like stale cleaning products anymore, but it’s about 37 degrees downstairs and the tiles on the kitchen floor are so cold walking across it hurts his feet a little. He turns up the heat [maybe to 75, instead of the normal 68. But whatever.] and goes back upstairs to pull the toasty clean sheets out of the dryer. 

He curses king-sized beds and down comforters and barely resists the urge to faceplant right smack in the middle of the bed when he’s halfway done. He’s just pulling on the last pillow case when the front door opens. 

“Sam?” John’s voice drifts from the front door and Sam just barely resists throwing himself down the stairs to get there faster.

He’s down the stairs and wrapping his arms around John before John’s voice stops echoing through the house.

“Jerk - why aren’t you in Edmonton, practicing or meditating and eating vegetables or doing whatever it is that Eakins does in the name of team-building?” John’s low voice rumbles against the side of Sam’s neck and Sam is mostly used to a relationship comprised of stolen minutes together during the season and the unexpected freedom of the off-season. But sometimes he feels like he lives for moments like this, when John’s hurt and Sam hasn’t seen him in weeks and here he is, real and solid and everything Sam has wanted since he was 17.

“I have three days,” Sam shrugs, “I said it was a family thing, which it is, but maybe I let them believe I’m in Oakville instead of here.”

“You can’t lie to them Sam,” John protests.

“I absolutely did lie to them,” Sam replies, stepping back and stopping just shy of reaching forward to unbutton John’s jacket and unwrap the scarf from around his neck.

“I’m glad it was you,” John says shrugging out of the coat and tossing it on the coat rack, “I was trying to figure out how I was going to defend myself while completely exhausted and on crutches.”

“I’m not,” Sam steps forward to press their lips together sweetly for just a second, “I couldn’t not be here. You know that right.”

“I absolutely do know that,” John flips his scarf around Sam’s neck and pulls him in to kiss again. “And still I’m glad you’re here.”

“There’s Thai in the kitchen,” Sam mumbles rubbing his nose against the fragile skin of John’s collarbone.

“Even gladder you’re here,” John tugs Sam’s hair so he tilts his head back and they can kiss some more.

“Want to go up and take a shower and then eat in bed?”

“Only about as much as I want to continue breathing,” John grins and performs a complex maneuver where he balances on his crutches and kicks his shoe off.

Later, they trade bites of Pad Thai and kisses and pass an extra-large styrofoam container of green curry back and forth. They’re piled into bed in boxers and soft t-shirts, and there’s an empty container of Mongolian beef on Sam’s bedside table and John’s hair is still wet from the shower and his knee is propped on pillows Sam stole from the guest room.

“This is way better than hospital bed cuddling,” John stabs a piece of chicken more viciously than it really warrants and shoves it in his mouth. “Fucking Kassian.”

Sam thinks back to John’s lightning-fast visit to Edmonton before his jaw surgery in the fall. To John’s face, exhausted from training camp and a transcontinental flight, but exactly the face he’d wanted to see. He’d been so full of painkillers and steroids and antibiotics that they’d barely talked, but John had barely blinked before he’d toed off his shoes and pulled off his hoodie and crawled right into Sam’s hospital bed.

“Hospital bed cuddling was pretty worth it though,” Sam remembers drifting in and out of sleep, the unfamiliar hospital noises keeping him from fully succumbing to sleep, but the comfort of John’s heavy head resting on his shoulder and their feet tangled together under the blankets all night long.

“It would have been more fun if I could have stayed to see you all jazzed up on painkillers. But it was worth it to be there to kiss your bruised face before they wheeled you into surgery.”

“Love you,” Sam kisses John and tries to snag a chicken satay from the carton John’s hoarding on his side of the bed.

“Love you,” John stabs him in the hand with a fork and takes a big bite of the chicken in Sam’s hand. “I’m glad you broke into my house.”

“Do the people who break into your house usually have a key and leave the porch light on for you?” Sam asks, squeezing closer and pressing his warm feet against John’s cold toes.

“No,” John shrugs. “They don’t usually remember to order extra Curry for me either,” he admits. “This is better.”

Sam hums tunelessly in agreement and grins when he hears the furnace kick on again. They’re going to fall asleep wrapped together and surrounded by empty takeout containers and wake up because John needs a painkiller and the furnace is turned up too high. But they’re together for 2 more days and that almost makes the rest of it worth it.


End file.
